Audre Lorde reads Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

“To be proud of supposedly separating the sexual from the spiritual from the emotional from the mental, is to attempt to not be fully human, because the bio-psycho-social-spiritual is what makes up our well-being; there IS no separation. It is the dis-eased colonist culture that tries to normalize the very abnormal act of compartmentalization.

…Some people think it is “tough women” who make “successful sex workers.” To that sentiment, I like this Arnold Itwaru truth-ism:

“Toughness is the new hallmark of liberation. Tough decisions have to be made. Life is said to be a tough business. This is a troubling rule of the tough in a culture which has institutionalized violation. The new woman [the so-called empowered sex worker?] is the tough woman. She has successfully imitated some of the worst features in the mythologization of masculinity in this culture, and in this she has sunk deeper into the domination in the values of the phallus/destroyer/protector. She is now the active and “free agent” in the enforcement of its rule. This is her abusive liberation.”